Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

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You’ve got to find what you love

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Alfie is seventy-two-years old and decides to leave his wife of forty years, and have a good time. He meets a twenty-something call girl, and dates her. So why not a Ferrari instead of a call girl? you may ask, well, Anthony Hopkins who plays the character Alfie, in the movie,You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, says, “Everyone makes mistakes in life and this guy made a big mistake. It cost him his marriage and probably his life. Fear rules so many of our lives, and in our lives we try to accumulate and gather as much as we can because at the back of our mind,the end is in sight.”

(If you wish to listen to the interview, please click the link)

 

Furthermore, Hopkins states the moral of, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, the latest Woody Allen film is probably,”Carpe diem.”
Anthony Hopkins says, “We live and then we die, so what’s the big deal. Don’t analyze it. I gave up trying to figure it out years ago.” He then quotes a riddle from Yeats and interprets as, “Don’t try to find meaning in life, because you won’t. There may be a meaning, and there may not be one, none of us know, it’s all a mystery, and it’s all a dream.”
I find wisdom in his words, and a sense of relief, that sometimes, when life becomes overwhelming, we create problems that have not yet occurred, and may never happen, so why do we waste time worrying?
Another story taken from Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, during his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, also ties in with what Anthony Hopkins says. Jobs talks about death, since doctors initially told him he had three to six months left to live. This changed the way he thought about his life.
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I hope you’re already living the life you love to the fullest. I know some people are struggling, however, we need to stop letting different kinds of fear rule our lives.

Have you found what you love?

What stress can do to teenagers

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Craig, a sixteen-year-old hears the voices of his parents and his sister say, “Don’t do it,” and wakes up in a sweat.

His parents love him. They’re nice people, so what’s the problem? Stress. He doesn’t want to disappoint his family, especially not his dad.
This is his life, and one Sunday morning at 5 a.m., he wakes up from his recurring nightmare, shaking.  He’s standing on the metal railing, getting ready to jump off a bridge, and this time, he doesn’t wake up before the jump, he wakes up as he’s falling.While his family is still asleep, Craig gets dressed and walks to a hospital. He tells the receptionist, “I want to commit suicide.” She hands him a clipboard and says, “Fill this out,” and laughs at something her friend says on the phone.

Craig is admitted to the adult psychiatric ward, and is placed in a room with a middle-aged Egyptian man, who does nothing but sleep all day. He decides he made a mistake and wants to be released. He cannot. He is forced to stay for a minimum of five days. Everyone is much older, except for one teenage girl who cuts herself.
His parents show up, and his mother is happy he admitted himself. They bring some clothes and toiletries and leave him there. What happens during the five days is amazing. Craig rediscovers his love and talent for drawing. He also finds out he’s a great rock singer when forced to sing.

He bonds with a man in the ward, who has an eight-year-old daughter. They play basketball, and he gives Craig the positive attention and advice that he is not receiving from his own father. Through this, Craig also changes people in the psychiatric ward, and when he leaves after five days, he’s a different person. He’s learned to become a kid with a passion for life.

To some of you, this may sound like a Hollywood movie, and yes, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”

In an article on teenagers and stress, I found the following as major causes of stress:

  • high expectations placed upon them by
  • parents and teachers
  • participating in extracurricular activities
  • being over-scheduled

Now I know Craig is a bright sixteen-year-old with goals, and there are also many examples of teenagers without goals, however, have things changed that much? Are there more young people stressing out today? Is it harder to be a teenager today than when you grew up?

Do you fall for hype?

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After closing myself off from the cyber world for a month, I noticed something I hadn’t paid attention to before. As I read through all the blogs I subscribe to on how to improve your blogging, yourself, your parenting skills, your life, etc. I asked myself, “Do we really fall for hype?” and if so, “Why?”
Standing back made me realize the amount of pressure we receive to become better at everything, faster than anyone, all of it has to be painless of course. Some examples I saw in my Inbox:
How to set and achieve your goals faster than ever before.
Perhaps if I stopped sleeping, I could achieve my goals faster.
Learn How You Can Start to Age Backwards!
If I was born old, I could age backwards. That might work.
How to Create lasting Love.
With a lot of effort, compromise and not nagging my husband.
How to Enjoy greater success, wealth and happiness quickly and easily.
If I got everything I wanted, and got it quickly and easily, would I appreciate it? What would be the point of trying?
And strangely enough, as I started writing this post, I came across the following title: Hype Copy that Sells and How to Write it, by ProCopyTips
I read the section on: How to turn bad hype into good hype,
I’m going to summarize what needs to be done according to the article in ProCopyTips.
Say you have a headline that claims the following:
All your wrinkles will miraculously disappear overnight!
Well not only do you need to let your reader have proof, but you have to place the proof wisely, so you can  “ambush” the reader. Wow, that sounds a little scary to me.
“When you finally do present your hype – your claim to have the biggest, baddest, best product on the planet, it won’t be mistaken for or accused of being hype (of the bad kind), but rather it will be seen as a descriptive and accurate statement of the obvious and the proven (hype of the good kind).”

So, my friends, do you fall for hype? If so, can you give us an example, and why it worked for you?

How to be good

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Most of us like the idea of being good, and since it can mean different things to each one of us, I’d like to explore this topic a little deeper.

As a little girl, being “good” meant obeying my parents, doing well in school and feeling good when someone told my mother, “She’s a good little girl.”

As we grow older, how to be good is generally associated with giving to others, whether it’s a listening ear, helping someone in need, or volunteering our time for what we perceive to be a “good” cause.

I don’t know if you’ve read the book, How to be Good, by Nick Hornby, but I highly recommend it. Not only is the author male, but his protagonist is a mother, wife and doctor, and Hornby captures the true essence of what it’s like to be a wife living with a grumpy, rude, negative husband, who writes a grumpy, rude, negative newspaper column about things that irritate him in his world

Wanting to file for divorce, something strange happens.Rather than trusting his wife, the Doctor, to heal his back aches and headaches, he finds a quack to heal him. His name is DJ Goodnews, and with his hot hands, he not only cures David’s aches and pains, but transforms him into a good man.

Since David is no longer the same man, and thus can no longer write negative columns, he wants to change his family, including his two kids, aged eight and ten, and forces them to give away half their toys, and one of their computers. Together with DJ Goodnews, who moves in with them, David starts an “adopt a homeless teenager into your home,” neighborhood program.

Being good, is taken to the other extreme, and he shows the consequences of what being too good can do to a family.

It’s interesting to think that there are limits on being good. What’s your opinion?
I shall write mine in the comments section,

Manuscript Revision Blast

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I am working with an amazing editor. She’s an expert on story structure and I call her the Doctor Phil of book editing. She’s an award-winning playwright, published poet, and Emmy nominated writer.

I have a deadline to finish my memoir revisions by the end of September.
My goal is to finish my memoir and get it published, and in order for me to do that, I need to focus 100% on my manuscript. When a sweet lady asked me, “Can I buy your memoir?” at my last presentation on “Gutsy Blogging for Writers,” I realized, “Wow, people actually want to buy my book.” She then asked me if I would autograph a page in her notebook.
This means no blogging or visiting blogs until September 30th. (Ouch!)

It breaks my heart to do this but I have to stay focused for a month. I wish all of you Gutsy Blogging and hope you will come back and visit me when my doors open again on September 30th.
 
All the best to you, and thanks for understanding.

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